The U.S. military is still months behind on its hypersonic missile program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released Monday, as China is ramping up its own hypersonic testing.
Hypersonic missile systems are capable of taking evasive measures mid-flight and moving at speeds up to 7,000 miles an hour — five times the speed of sound. Already plagued by delays, the U.S. Army will likely not be able to make its first-ever hypersonic weapons system combat-ready until at least fiscal year 2025, which begins on Oct. 1, according to the GAO report. (RELATED: Authorities Charge Four People In Incident Connected To Death Of Two Navy SEALs)
U.S. intelligence has previously warned that China is currently leading the pack in terms of hypersonic capabilities, while the U.S. program has struggled with operational problems and delays, according to Bloomberg. By 2018, China had conducted more than 20 times as many hypersonic tests as the U.S., according to a February report from the Congressional Research Service.
“Over the past two decades, China has dramatically advanced its development of conventional and nuclear-armed hypersonic missile technologies and capabilities through intense and focused investment, development, testing and deployment,” Paul Freisthler, chief scientist for science and technology at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers during a congressional hearing in March 2023. “While both China and Russia have conducted numerous successful tests of hypersonic weapons and have likely fielded operational systems, China is leading Russia in both supporting infrastructure and numbers of systems.”
US President Joe Biden (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. Biden and Xi will try to prevent the superpowers’ rivalry spilling into conflict when they meet for the first time in a year at a high-stakes summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. With tensions soaring over issues including Taiwan, sanctions and trade, the leaders of the world’s largest economies are expected to hold at least three hours of talks at the Filoli country estate on the city’s outskirts. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
The Army “missed its goal of fielding its first Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW battery — including missiles — by fiscal year 2023 due to integration challenges,” the report reads. “Based on current test and missile production plans, the Army will not field its first complete battery until fiscal year 2025.
The initial goal is to develop a battery system capable of holding and launching eight hypersonic missiles, according to the report. For the weapons system to be deemed ready for combat operations, the Army must first conduct a successful missile test; two previous weapons tests in 2023 weren’t completed because of issues detected with the launcher.
The Army said after the failed launches that the next test launch cannot be conducted until the end of fiscal year 2024, according to the report. If further issues are discovered during the next tests, the hypersonic program could be delayed even longer.
“The program is on track to implement required corrective actions and successfully demonstrate system performance by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024,” the Army told the GAO, according to the report.
The Pentagon has poured $12 billion into hypersonic development across various military branches since 2018, but still has yet to field a single weapon, according to Bloomberg. Leaked Pentagon documents from 2023 found that China had developed and deployed a new hypersonic missile capable of evading U.S. defense systems.
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